Bend Tooling Encyclopedia™

Welcome to the industry’s only comprehensive resource for the terminology used in rotary-draw tube-bending. The primary objective of the Bend Tooling Encyclopedia is to define the various words and phrases in use in the tube-bending community in order to ensure that even if we are not speaking the exact same language, we do understand each other.

The Bend Tooling Encyclopedia™ builds upon the glossary John Gillanders authored in his widely-circulated guide to tube-bending, Pipe and Tube Bending Manual — and then some. More than a dictionary, it contains extensive articles on key subjects which not only provide definitions but also the concepts, applications, practices, and relationships to other subjects behind the term in question.

An abridged form of the Bend Tooling Encyclopedia recently appeared as a series of articles in “The Tube & Pipe Journal”. It is also the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ official guide for tube-bending terminology.

As always, we ask members of the tube-bending community to advise us on corrections, additions, and new terms. Your input is especially helpful in identifying local variations in terminology.

FREE Tube-Bending Guide Download:

A complete guide to the principles of the 4-Step set-up for tube-bending tools

This is a printable handbook showing how to implement in four standardized steps the “forward mandrel” set-up for rotary-draw tube-bending machines and establish process control over the so-called black art. The procedure is based upon the guiding principle that the tools make the bend and takes advantage of the inserted design of modern mandrel tooling.